We’ve been able to participate in three birthday parties for Allison. The first was at Mark & Vickie’s (who board Gizzy at Pemsey), the second was at lunch the next day (see selfie below), and the third was last night here at Bromley. Her husband Michel not only grilled steaks, but made a delicious Belgian chocolate cake using his mother’s recipe.

The last was after our first day in London, a site-seeing extravaganza. After taking the train to Victoria station, we walked to Buckingham Palace (where the guards were unchanged), then through St. James Park to the Horse Guard Parade, down Whitehall to Downing Street (can’t get to #10 like the old days), then Big Ben & the Houses of Parliament. After a spot of lunch we went to Westminster Abbey and took the audio tour (interesting chat with a volunteer at Darwin’s tomb about belief – in God and/or evolution), followed by a double-decker bus ride to Covent Garden. There we encountered a protest at a theatre in which the Dalai Lama was giving a talk (I didn’t realize he had resistance other than the Chinese government). We spent a nice hour or two in Covent Garden listening to live opera and string quartets, eating meat pies and crepes, and browsing through the stalls of antique bric-a-brac. Then we tubed by Victoria, trained to Bromley, and, having detrained at the wrong station, took a taxi to the Nyssens.

Today, while it is pouring rain, we are nonetheless going back to London for a second day of site-seeing.